The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has lodged a complaint with the UK’s antitrust regulator, alleging that news aggregators such as Apple News and Google News fail to adequately acknowledge the sources of the stories they feature.

According to a report by Apple Insider, the BBC has petitioned the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to compel Apple and Google to provide more prominent attribution to news sources. Although the CMA’s ruling would technically only apply to UK-based publications, it is likely that any modifications made by the aggregators would have a broader impact on other publishers as well.

In its complaint, the BBC stated, “If audiences appreciate the value of our content and services but attribute that value to intermediaries rather than the BBC, it undermines the perceived value of the BBC.”

The perceived value is particularly crucial for the BBC, as it relies heavily on a licence fee paid by British households for the majority of its funding. Therefore, it is essential for the broadcaster’s work to be visible and valued in order to maintain public support for the fee.

Recently, Apple suspended its AI-powered news summaries after receiving complaints from the BBC and other publishers regarding inaccuracies in the summaries.